
Free Daily Podcast Summary
by Jenn Cohen + Laura Demuth
Mighty as a Mother is a safe space honoring the beautiful (and messy!) journey of raising children while pursuing your passions. As two executives juggling four toddlers, we may not be experts but we sure have learned a lot along the way! Alongside experts and like-minded mamas, we get real - sharing our own experiences on subjects ranging from maternal mental health, female friendships, marriage, wellness, and the juggle (and struggle!) of being a busy mom. Thank you for joining this honest, unfiltered community where we honor YOU. We're thrilled you're here!
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
Investing for women starts with one simple distinction most of us were never taught, and financial educator Amanda Holden, founder of Invested Development and author of the national bestseller How to Be a Rich Old Lady, walks us through it in this episode of Mighty as a Mother. We cover how to start investing as a beginner, the difference between a retirement account and the investments inside it, whether to pay off debt or invest, how motherhood and caregiving shape the gender wealth gap, and how to keep building wealth through a career pause or uneven income. When was the last time you talked about money without quietly changing the subject? Amanda Holden is the founder of Invested Development and the author of How to Be a Rich Old Lady: Your Guide to Easy Investing, Building Wealth, and Creating the Wild, Beautiful Life You Want. She has taught more than 25,000 students how to invest, and she does it with humor instead of jargon. Amanda studied economics and communications at UCLA and spent six years in investment management, much of it as the person sitting across the table from high-net-worth clients. Her coworkers were men. Her managers were men. Her clients were men. At 25, she took that as a sign she was exceptional. A few years of watching her friends get underpaid and unheard changed her mind. She saved, quit, traveled, and came home to teach women the skill she had been using to make wealthy men wealthier. Amanda's work sits right where money and feminism meet. She teaches everything from "are you ready to invest?" foundations to the mechanics of index funds, and she refuses to blame anyone for what they were never taught. For mothers, whose finances absorb career pauses, caregiving, and a long list of invisible costs, that approach changes how this whole conversation feels. Together we talk candidly about: The years Amanda spent hand-holding wealthy men through their portfolios, and the slow realization that made her walk away What Fidelity found when it asked women what they would do with $25,000, and why confidence and knowledge are not the same thing The beginner mistake Amanda sees constantly: opening a Roth IRA, putting money in, and never actually investing it Why your 401(k) is an account, not an investment, and what is really generating your return Pay off debt or invest? How to compare the numbers, and the "spiritual intake" that tells you which path fits you Why Amanda pushes back on the idea that women are simply more risk-averse Her one-word answer to what stands between most women and long-term wealth Protecting yourself through a career pause: prenups, postnups, spousal IRAs, and staying involved in your family's finances Meeting your own Rich Old Lady (Amanda's involves activism, Italy, and a compound full of girlfriends) Why the goal of investing was never the money itself You'll walk away knowing the one distinction that makes investing finally click, a way to weigh debt against investing that respects how you actually feel, and a clearer picture of the future you're building toward. You don't have to have it all figured out. You just have to start. Links & resources: How to Be a Rich Old Lady: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-to-Be-a-Rich-Old-Lady/Amanda-Holden/9781668066928 Amanda's website: amanda-holden.com Amanda on Instagram: @dumpster.doggy Amanda on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-holden-820b75123/ Fidelity's 2024 Women & Investing Study: https://newsroom.fidelity.com/pressreleases/new-research-from-fidelity-shows-71-of-women-own-investments-in-the-stock-market/s/db3a5765-9b69-4e51-a315-66ecc51e0066 If this episode resonated, subscribe wherever you listen, leave us a review, and share it with a mother who needs to hear this. Jenn + Laura Mighty as a Mother
Women and money: why do so many of us go quiet the second the subject comes up, and how do we start building wealth anyway? In the first episode of our Women, Power & Wealth series, Bola Sokunbi, founder and CEO of Clever Girl Finance and bestselling author of Clever Girl Millionaire, talks about letting go of money shame, why the gender wealth gap is as much about silence as salary, and how to build wealth as a woman from wherever you're starting. When did you last say a money number out loud? Not to your banking app. To a friend, a partner, a sister. What you earn, what you owe, what you're hoping for. Bola Sokunbi is a Certified Financial Education Instructor, a six-time bestselling author, and the founder and CEO of Clever Girl Finance, one of the largest personal finance education platforms for women in the US. Her whole approach comes down to three words she returns to again and again in this conversation: all or something. Bola grew up in Nigeria, the youngest of four and the only girl. Her mother married at 19 and, after watching friends land on her doorstep with their children, their suitcases, and nowhere else to go, decided she would never be without money of her own. She went back to school, built businesses, and eventually paid for all four years of Bola's college in the US. Bola carried that lesson into her first job, saved her first $100,000 in just over three years on a $54,000 salary, and founded Clever Girl Finance in 2015 to share what she'd learned. Today Clever Girl Finance offers more than 30 free personal finance courses, with more than 100,000 women enrolled. Bola was named the 2021 Financial Education Instructor of the Year, and her work has been featured in Forbes, The New York Times, CNBC, and TIME. What she brings here is less about spreadsheets and more about what sits underneath them: the shame, the silence, and the family stories that shape how every one of us handles money, whether we're running a household, a team, a business, or a season at home. And the money lessons our kids are picking up whether we say them out loud or not. Together we talk candidly about: Why daughters inherited the recipe box while sons got pulled aside for the money talk, and what that inheritance is still costing us The lunch-table salary conversation where Bola learned she was the lowest-paid person at the table, and why women need to talk numbers with each other Letting go of the "I should have figured this out by 35" shame that keeps so many of us quiet Why your finances work like a GPS: you can't map a route until you're honest about where you are right now Finding a why that's actually yours, setting 3 to 5 goals, and shrinking a scary goal down to what you can do this week Trading all-or-nothing thinking for all or something Talking to kids about money while you're still a work in progress, including how Bola's 12-year-old went from saving for sneakers to wanting to own a piece of the sneaker company How to vet a financial planner the way you'd vet a first date or a daycare, and what to do when one asks whose money it really is Why 50/50 in a marriage almost never is, the case for a separate account for your own hair appointments, and what to do when your partner won't engage What financial freedom looks like for Bola now: options You'll walk away with a place to start that doesn't require a certain income, a partner, or a perfect plan. An honest look at where you are. A why that belongs to you. One small step for this week. And maybe the nerve to ask a friend what she makes. Links & resources Clever Girl Finance: https://www.clevergirlfinance.com Free Clever Girl Finance courses: https://www.clevergirlfinance.com/course-packages/ Free Financial Roadmap: <a href= "https://www.clevergirlfinance.com/financial-roa
ADHD and perimenopause can overlap in ways that make a woman feel like a different person, and for many the questions start in their 30s and 40s. In this episode, board-certified naturopathic endocrinologist Dr. Jolene Brighten, author of ADHD and Women, joins us to talk about ADHD in women, masked ADHD, decision fatigue, and what estrogen and progesterone have to do with focus, memory, and mood. Have you ever snapped over something so small that you stood in your own kitchen afterward wondering what is wrong with you? The dishwasher, not the dishes. The dishwasher. Dr. Jolene Brighten is a board-certified naturopathic endocrinologist, Menopause Society Certified Practitioner, nutrition scientist, and certified sex counselor. She is the bestselling author of Beyond the Pill and Is This Normal?, and her new book, ADHD and Women, is out October 6. Dr. Brighten started noticing a pattern in her clinic. Patients with PMDD and PCOS would see their hormone symptoms improve, and some of their ADHD symptoms would ease too, though they did not disappear. At the time, she says, there was almost no research connecting the two, and plenty of women were being told that what they described was not real. Her answer was to listen, and then to build the framework she now shares in her book. What she brings to this conversation is a clinician's explanation of how estrogen, progesterone, and the brain's focus and memory chemistry interact, paired with a very practical read on what masked ADHD looks like from the inside. It matters to mothers, and to anyone carrying the mental load of a household, a team, or both, because the women who look the most capable are often the ones running the hardest on overcompensation, and the people around them rarely see the effort. Together we talk candidly about: What masked ADHD looks like in a woman who seems completely on top of it: rehearsing conversations before she walks in, arriving 30 to 60 minutes early, saying yes to everything How estrogen, progesterone, and dopamine interact, and why perimenopause can make focus, working memory, and mood feel unfamiliar The ice cream question: how a few small decisions in a row can look like indifference to the people around you Why a forgotten request can read as "I'm not important to her," and what a partner might ask instead How ADHD, anxiety, depression, and PMDD overlap, and why sorting through that takes the right mental health expert How to tell a rough season of nervous system overload from a lifelong ADHD pattern Libido, touched-out evenings, and why planning connection ahead of time can take pressure off both of you Sleep advice written for neurotypical brains, and what Dr. Brighten suggests instead Externalizing your working memory: a landing zone for your keys, one automated bill, a coffee maker you set up the night before Chill girl meal plans, ghee, leftover potato salad, and why we need a whole episode on the science of tacos You will walk away with language for the moments that do not make sense in the middle of a long day, a clearer sense of what to look for in a clinician who is literate in ADHD in women, and one small thing you can take out of your own head this week. As always, this conversation is for education and is not medical advice. Links and Resources: Dr. Brighten's Book ADHD & Women: https://drbrighten.com/adhd-and-women/ Dr. Brighten's Website: https://drbrighten.com Dr. Brighten's Instagram: <a href= "https://www.instagram.com/drjolenebrighten" target="_blank" rel= "noopener" data-saferedirecturl= "https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.instagram.com/drjo
Who's got that end of the week feeling? The one where you did everything right, answered the messages, kept every plate spinning, and still went to bed feeling like you came up short? Not tired in a way that sleep fixes. Tired in a way that has quietly become your baseline. Meghan French Dunbar calls herself a business anthropologist, which is a generous way of saying she has spent years studying how work actually works and who it actually works for. Whatever your work looks like, outside the home, inside it, or some impossible combination of the two, her answer lands the same way: the rules you have been exhausting yourself to follow were never written with you in mind. She got here the hard way. She studied journalism at a time when everyone was telling her print was dead. She went into nonprofits, then into magazines, and then one Friday night in 2014 she turned her phone off to be present at dinner with a friend. She woke up to more than sixty text messages from her boss and a one in the morning email telling her she had been fired for being unreachable. The next morning she told her husband she thought the universe wanted her to launch a print magazine about sustainable business. She crowdfunded it with a friend, and the first issue got picked up by every Whole Foods in the world. That became Conscious Company Media, which she co-founded and led as CEO. She has since interviewed more than a thousand business leaders, consulted with companies including Coach and Kate Spade, and founded the World-Changing Women's Summit. She also resigned as CEO in early 2020, weeks before lockdown, after coming back from maternity leave with significant postpartum depression on top of being completely burned out. Her recovery took about two years. Her book came out of wanting to know whether there was a way to do ambitious work without destroying yourself, and out of noticing that of all the high achieving women she met, roughly one in ten seemed to be genuinely thriving. Those were the women she set out to study. Together we talk candidly about: The one in the morning email that ended her magazine job, and the decision she made by the next morning Getting told print was dead, crowdfunding a magazine anyway, and landing in every Whole Foods Resigning as CEO after maternity leave, in the middle of postpartum depression and full burnout Why her burnout recovery took two years, not two weeks, and why that is the norm What the research actually says drives burnout, and why almost none of it is about how you show up Why imposter syndrome is not a confidence problem, and what happens when you stop treating it like one The one in ten women who seemed to be thriving, and what they were doing differently The joy question: if you had one day with nobody to take care of, what would you actually do with it Essentializing your time, your relationships, and what you let into your brain What she wants the woman who thinks she is just bad at balance to understand You will walk away with language for something you have probably been carrying privately, and with three or four things you can actually start this week without quitting anything or overhauling your life. Meghan's framing is the part that sticks: the return on investing in yourself is not selfish, and your kids will not remember the cookies you stressed over. They will remember how you showed up. LINKS AND RESOURCES Meghan's Book: This Isn't Working Website: https://www.meghanfrenchdunbar.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meghanfrenchdunbar/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghanfrenchdunbar/ Meghan's TedX talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZfuHsa27yk If this episode resonated, subscribe wherever you listen, leave us a review,
Women's health self-advocacy is the heart of this episode, and Dr. Tracy Shevell, a board-certified high-risk OB-GYN with 25 years in academic medicine, is exactly the person to walk us through it. If you have ever been told your symptoms were "just anxiety" while your body kept insisting otherwise, this conversation gives you the language and the permission to be heard. When was the last time you told a doctor the whole truth, not the version you already softened because the appointment was running late and you did not want to be the difficult one? Dr. Tracy Shevell spent 25 years on the front lines of women's medicine. She trained at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, completed her residency at Mount Sinai and her Maternal-Fetal Medicine fellowship at Columbia, and spent 17 years as an attending and Director of Perinatal Ultrasound at Stamford Health. She has cared for the most complex, high-risk pregnancies you can imagine. Then she got sick herself, and her own doctors told her it was anxiety. That experience reshaped everything. After watching women's symptoms get minimized for two decades and then living it firsthand, she founded Blue Moon Perinatal, a concierge practice that helps women navigate the medical, emotional, and psychological weight of their care. Her community knows her as the internet's "doctor best friend," the one who tells the truth and gives you the words for the parts that are hardest to say out loud. Her forthcoming book, Labor & Deliverance: Reclaiming the Healing in Women's Health, comes out January 26, 2027, and argues something radical: that emotional health is clinically equal to the physical symptoms we all carry. Here is why this matters to us. About 80% of people diagnosed with an autoimmune disease are women (NIH), and research consistently shows women wait longer for diagnoses and are more likely to have physical symptoms filed under stress or anxiety. Dr. Tracy names all of it, and then she hands us something we can actually use. Together we talk candidly about: Why "becoming the quarterback of your own care" is not a slogan, it is a survival skill in a system that no longer holds you How to tell the difference between intuition and anxiety when your body is trying to tell you something is off The habit so many of us have of apologizing before we even ask a question, and the one sentence to stop rewriting What it actually means that emotional, physical, and spiritual health are linked, not separate lanes Using AI as a sounding board, never a diagnosis, so you walk into a 7-minute visit already prepared The people-pleasing, high-achieving patterns so many women carry, and what they may be quietly costing us Fatigue at baseline: when "I'm just tired" is worth a second look, and the new symptoms that deserve one Making guilt-free time for yourself when there is genuinely none left, and why it is not optional What the women who walked before us can teach us, and why intergenerational friendship matters more than we think Finding the passion that sustains you, no matter how full the season You will leave this one standing a little taller in the exam room, with a pen, a paper, and the belief that you deserve answers. Not because you are difficult, but because your body has been telling the truth all along. Links & resources: Book: Labor & Deliverance: Reclaiming the Healing in Women's Health (preorder): https://www.tracyshevellmd.com/book-media Website: https://www.tracyshevellmd.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracyshevellmd LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyshevellmd/ <li
The lunches are packed, the forms are signed, and the family calendar is already full through October. If the return to school has you feeling chronically behind, on time, on rest, on joy, you are in very good company. In this episode, we sit down with Cassie Holmes, chaired professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management and bestselling author of Happier Hour, for a grounding conversation about why time feels so scarce every fall, and what actually helps. Cassie doesn't just study happiness and time poverty. She has lived it. As a working mom moving through every season from toddlers to teenagers (her son just started middle school), she brings both data and deep empathy to the question so many of us are asking as the school year ramps back up: why does it feel like there is never enough time, and how do we stop feeling so depleted by it? Together, we talk candidly about: What time poverty really is, and why mothers feel it most acutely when the school-year schedule returns Why saying yes to every playdate, practice, and sign-up sheet quietly leaves us more depleted, not more connected The surprising research behind giving time to get time How small mindset shifts, like "less doing, more being," can change how a hectic fall week actually feels Why connection, not productivity, is often the missing ingredient in our busiest seasons A simple way to rate your days so you can find the joy already hiding inside the time you have How to treat an ordinary Saturday like a vacation without adding a single thing to your to-do list Why happiness isn't selfish, and how caring for yours makes you a more present parent, partner, and leader This conversation is full of permission slips: to stop racing the drop-off clock, to stop saving joy for "someday," and to notice the ordinary moments that won't always be there. The slow morning before the bus comes. The bedtime cuddle. The shared chair at the beach before summer fully closes. Links & Resources 👉 Happier Hour by Cassie Holmes 👉 Research on time poverty, happiness, and well-being 👉 Cassie's website For more conversations like this one, subscribe to Mighty as a Mother on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and follow along on Instagram and LinkedIn.
What would you put on a necklace? Not the piece you bought because it was pretty, but the one you reach for on the hard days, the one that sits close enough to your heart that you feel it when you breathe. Melissa Clayton is the founder and CEO of Tiny Tags, the personalized jewelry brand made for mothers. A former CPA, she started the company hand-stamping necklaces at her kitchen counter while raising 3 boys, and grew it into a multi-million-dollar business with no outside investment, no debt, and 100% ownership still in her name. What makes Melissa worth listening to is not just that she built something, though she did, without a war chest or a headline raise, at a time when women are starting nearly half of all new US businesses. It is that she built it around a definition of success most of us are never handed. She measured growth against presence, not just revenue, and grew Tiny Tags slowly and on purpose so she would not miss the football games and the field trips. She is refreshingly honest about money, marriage, guilt, and gratitude, and she can hold the business lesson and the human one in the same hand. Together we talk candidly about: Why she believes kids do not need a perfect mother, just a present one, and how that became the whole brand Building the business slowly on purpose, so she would not miss the football games and the field trips What the necklace actually does on the hard days, and the "I have them" moment in the driveway Turning down investors for 15 years and still owning 100% of the company Saying no to brides, graduates, and every bigger market, and why that focus protected the mission Writing letters to her boys, and the empty-nester chapter she is walking into now How Target found her on Instagram, and why she almost said no What she wishes she had known when her kids were the age our listeners' kids are today You will walk away rethinking what you are actually optimizing for, and a little less convinced that faster and more is the only way to build. Whether you are growing a company, a career, or a family, Melissa's story is a reminder that presence can be a strategy, not a sacrifice. Links & resources: Tiny Tags: https://tinytags.com Instagram: @tinytags Melissa Clayton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-clayton-817b568/ If this episode resonated, subscribe wherever you listen, leave us a review, and share it with a mother who needs to hear this. Check us out on Substack: mightyasamother.substack.com
Registered dietitian and nutritional therapist Kim Shapira has spent nearly three decades helping people rebuild trust with food, and in this episode she tells us why the real problem was never willpower. Registered dietitian Kim Shapira breaks down what actually supports gut health and long-term wellness, and why fiber, not another diet, is the habit worth building. Have you ever wondered why "eat healthier" advice never seems to stick, no matter how many times you try? It might be because most of it was never actually about your health. Kim Shapira, MS, RD, is a celebrity dietitian and nutritional therapist whose Los Angeles practice has worked with clients across entertainment, hospitals, sports medicine, and addiction recovery for nearly three decades. She holds a B.S. in Exercise Kinesiology from Tulane University and an M.S. in Human Metabolism and Clinical Nutrition from Boston University. Kim built her career on a simple but radical idea: food isn't the enemy, and neither is your body. Early in her practice, a client who lost significant weight told Kim she was planning to gain it back, and that moment reshaped everything about how Kim approaches her work. She realized the real work was never about what people eat, but about the emotional patterns underneath, and the daily habits that actually support long-term health. That insight became the foundation of the Kim Shapira Method, her six-rule framework for eating without shame, and her book This Is What You're Really Hungry For, which features a foreword by longtime client Kaley Cuoco. Together we talk candidly about: Why health span, not just lifespan, is the more useful goal to focus on What actually supports gut health day to day, and what's just noise Simple, low-effort ways to build fiber into a busy day Why willpower isn't a sustainable strategy, and what actually helps people stick with change Kim's six rules, and how they replace restriction with trust How hormonal shifts through PMS, ovulation, pregnancy, and perimenopause affect hunger, mood, and body image What Kim reaches for when she's hungry and doesn't have time for a full meal By the end of this one, you may not walk away with a meal plan, and that's the point. You'll walk away with a clearer sense of what actually supports your health long term. Links & Resources: Book: This Is What You're Really Hungry For Website: kimshapiramethod.com Instagram: @kimshapiramethod LinkedIn: Kim Shapira Substack: kimshapiramethod.substack.com If this episode resonated, subscribe wherever you listen, leave us a review, and share it with a mother who needs to hear this.
Free AI-powered daily recaps. Key takeaways, quotes, and mentions — in a 5-minute read.
Get Free Summaries →Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.
Listeners also like.

Don't Mom Alone Podcast
A mom of four boys hosts conversations to help parents feel less isolated through shared experiences and supportive resources.

Spotlight: Women Sharing Their Stories
Women share personal stories of struggle, triumph, and hope to connect and support one another through lived experience.

After Bedtime with Big Little Feelings
Honest conversations about modern parenting challenges with practical advice and emotional support from experienced guides.

What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making Life Better, with Two Funny Moms
Two moms discuss parenting challenges, child development, and self-care with humor and practical advice.

Good Inside with Dr. Becky
A clinical psychologist provides practical guidance for handling common parenting challenges and improving parent-child relationships.

Entrepreneur Parents - Pretty & Punk Podcast | Family Success, Business Tactics, Relationship Goals
Parents who run businesses share real experiences balancing family, marriage, and entrepreneurship.

The Bossticks
Unfiltered conversations with top leaders, entrepreneurs, and experts offering actionable advice for personal growth.

The Mom Hour
Practical advice and honest conversations about motherhood from two experienced moms navigating the challenges of parenting.

The Balanced, Beautiful and Abundant Show - Rebecca Whitman
A coach helps high-achieving women overcome burnout using a framework centered on spiritual, emotional, physical, and financial well-being.

Good Life Project
Deep conversations about building a meaningful life through midlife reinventions, grounded in science and human experience.

How Hard Can It Be? with Diana Maria Riva
A weekly conversation for GenX women navigating midlife challenges, from empty nesting to self-identity, with humor and honesty.

We Can Do Hard Things
Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle discuss personal struggles and emotional resilience in honest, open conversations.
Mighty as a Mother is a safe space honoring the beautiful (and messy!) journey of raising children while pursuing your passions. As two executives juggling four toddlers, we may not be experts but we sure have learned a lot along the way! Alongside experts and like-minded mamas, we get real - sharing our own experiences on subjects ranging from maternal mental health, female friendships, marriage, wellness, and the juggle (and struggle!) of being a busy mom. Thank you for joining this honest, unfiltered community where we honor YOU. We're thrilled you're here!
AI-powered recaps with compact key takeaways, quotes, and insights.
Get key takeaways from Mighty As A Mother in a 5-minute read.
Stay current on your favorite podcasts without falling behind.
It's a free AI-powered email that summarizes new episodes of Mighty As A Mother as soon as they're published. You get the key takeaways, notable quotes, and links & mentions — all in a quick read.
When a new episode drops, our AI transcribes and analyzes it, then generates a personalized summary tailored to your interests and profession. It's delivered to your inbox every morning.
No. Podzilla is an independent service that summarizes publicly available podcast content. We're not affiliated with or endorsed by Jenn Cohen + Laura Demuth.
Absolutely! The free plan covers up to 3 podcasts, any in the catalog. Basic raises that to 15, Pro to 40 and Max to 100. Browse our full catalog at /podcasts.
Mighty As A Mother publishes biweekly. Our AI generates a summary within hours of each new episode.
Mighty As A Mother covers topics including Education, Fitness, Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Self-Improvement. Our AI identifies the specific themes in each episode and highlights what matters most to you.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.